Press
In Turkey’s local elections, at least 47,000 soldiers will be brought to Kurdish cities to vote as voters. The opposition is outraged.
Ankara – There are allegations of vote manipulation in the local elections from the eastern provinces of Sirnak, Kars, Igdir, Agri, Siirt, Hakkari and Mardin. People are said to have been taken to the polling stations by bus. The spokeswoman for the pro-Kurdish DEM Parti (formerly HDP), Aysegül Dogan, told the news agency Mezopotamya that her party had registered “transported voters” in 31 cities and municipalities.
“How else can we call this a coup,” said Dogan. “A group of 5,950 soldiers and police from outside who voted were brought to Sirnak Center. Soldiers who had not even been in Sirnak for a day went to Sirnak to register their votes,” writes Kurdish journalist Cesim Ilhami on
Soldiers in civilian clothes vote in local elections in Turkey
Bundestag member Gökay Akbulut (Left) also confirmed in an interview with Fr.de from IPPEN.MEDIA that soldiers had been transported to the polling stations in the Kurdish cities. Akbulut was in Siirt with a delegation as election observers. “47,000 Turkish security forces were taken to Kurdish cities by bus. They are Turkish soldiers who were brought here from other parts of Turkey or from northeast Syria (Kurdish Rojava). Here in Siirt alone there are 6,000 to 7,000 such soldiers from abroad who have cast their votes.”
Soldiers in civilian clothes are isolated in Kurdish cities
However, the Turkish authorities wanted to hide the identities of these young men. “The young men are in civilian clothes. So you don’t have a uniform on. However, you can clearly see that they are soldiers or other security forces. The men have short haircuts, they go into the polling stations in groups and are also protected separately.”
This is also confirmed by Paul Robben, who visited the local elections in Turkey as part of a delegation of election observers with Bundestag member Gökay Akbulut. “There is a heavy military presence here. Soldiers in civilian clothes were brought here on buses,” says Robben in an interview with our editorial team. Robben also assumes that an attempt is being made to cover up the events: “The license plates of the buses are covered. They pasted over these. There it says AK Parti – the party of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.”
Opposition confirms electoral manipulation in local elections in Türkiye
On X (formerly Twitter), opposition MP Sezgin Tanrikulu (CHP) blamed Erdogan for the alleged manipulation of the local election results in Turkey. The president wants to help his AKP party win. “No mayoral office that the AKP gets with the help of voters brought in is legally and politically legitimate.”
However, this is unlikely to intimidate Erdogan. So far he has ignored rulings by his own constitutional court and the European Court of Human Rights.